The following description of background art may include insights, discoveries, understandings or disclosures, or associations together with disclosures not known to the relevant art prior to the present invention but provided by the invention. Some such contributions of the invention may be specifically pointed out below, whereas other such contributions of the invention will be apparent from their context.
An important factor in designing a future communication system is a cost-effective support of high data rates and efficient resource utilization. One communication system supporting high data rates is the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 8. An improved version of the Long Term Evolution radio access system is called LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). The LTE is designed to support high-speed data, multimedia unicast and multimedia broadcast services.
Typically, high data rates also set increased requirements for control signalling and resource allocation. In LTE Release 8, it is possible to allocate a continuous set of resources in frequency for uplink transmission on PUSCH (Physical Uplink Shared Channel). However, it can be expected that more flexibility is needed in resource allocation. A flexible resource allocation method would provide the network means for utilizing the available spectrum better and allow more flexible allocations for individual user equipment.
In addition to flexibility, the signalling load must be taken into account in the design of resource allocation.